A grim and unpredictable future could befall the Middle East if Hamas is destroyed, a top Pentagon official said, warning that another rampaging extremist group akin to the Islamic State terrorists could rise up in its place.

While Lt. General Michael Flynn criticized Hamas for exhausting
finite resources of the Gaza Strip to build a network of tunnels
for the purpose of fighting Israel, he nevertheless said that
destroying the group would only lead to a widening of the
regional conflict and probably an extremist group fighting in its
stead.

"If Hamas were destroyed and gone, we would probably end up
with something much worse. The region would end up with something
much worse," Reuters quoted the outgoing head of the Defense
Intelligence Agency as saying on Saturday at the Aspen Security
Forum in Colorado.

The Lt. General then envisioned an Iraq/Syria scenario, where
large swathes of northern territories have fallen under control
of the Islamist fighters of the Islamic Caliphate: “A worse
threat that would come into the sort of ecosystem there…
something like ISIS.”

With over 1,000 Palestinians now dead since Israel commenced the
ground phase of its 20-day-old operation, a tentative 24-hour ceasefire ended on Sunday with
hostilities renewing.

The pause in fighting was intended to open up a humanitarian
corridor for food and medical care, but as Israel offered to
extend the ceasefire it also warned that it would retaliate if
Hamas continued to fire rockets from the Gaza territory.

For its part, Hamas refused to accept the ceasefire deal
“without Israeli tanks withdrawing from the Gaza Strip and
without residents being able to return to their homes and
ambulances carrying bodies and being able to freely move around
in Gaza,” their spokesman said.

To many in the world the conflict between Israel and the occupied
Palestinian territory looks to be never-ending. And they are
worried that the same is now true for the Middle East at large.
Flynn’s views were voiced in the midst of a broader assessment of
conflicts in the region, which is now crumbling under the weight
of terrorism.

Although few people would prefer another Islamic State-style
faction taking over Hamas’ place, Flynn made clear that peace
between the two warring sides would not happen “in my
lifetime.”